Now that I’ve devoted several posts to summarizing the themes, emphases, authors, and occasions of the three Catholic epistles, I can provide some suggestions for further reading: important works written by scholars for non-scholars.  I have given brief annotations for each book to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while.   I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of one or more of these Catholic epistles, and of the problem of persecution dealt with in 1 Peter. Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the book of Acts and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point of this passage”; how does this passage relate to what Luke says elsewhere in his two-volume work or to what we can find in other parts of the New Testament?”; [...]

Now that I have provided a summary of the major themes and emphases of the letter of 2 Peter, I can move to the question of who actually wrote it.  It claims, of course, to be written by Simeon (i.e. Simon) Peter, Jesus disciple.  But it is widely thought in fact to be pseudonymous, more than any other book of the entire New Testament. I’d like to give a relatively fully explanation of why, and for that reason have decided to provide here a fairly heavily edited and accessible account of my discussion in Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press). ************* 2 Peter is among the least well attested works of the New Testament from Christian antiquity, although it is found already in the manuscript called P72, ca. 300 CE, along with 1 Peter and Jude, the two canonical letters with which it is most closely associated.   Still, during the first four centuries the book had an unsettled status among those interested in establishing the contours of the New Testament.  The church father Origen doubted [...]

In this “nutshell” series that summarizes each book of the New Testament in canonical order, we now come to the second letter that claims to be from the pen of Jesus’s disciple Peter.  Here is my one-sentence, fifty-word description of the book. 2 Peter is a short letter written in the name of Peter to warn readers to avoid false Christian teachers who endorse immoral lifestyles, so as to avoid severe condemnation on the day of judgment that is coming soon, even though some “scoffers” have denied it is coming at all.   Now I can expand on the major emphases and themes of the book before turning, in the next post, to who actually wrote it, when, and why.   The three-chapter letter of 2 Peter does not appear to be directed to any particular Christian community, but to Christians everywhere, or at least those who agree with him on what it means to be a follower of Christ; in his words, he write to those who have obtained “the same kind [...]

Why does the “Peter” of 1 Peter sound like Paul but not Peter? This is at the heart of the question of why a pseudonymous author who was claiming to be Peter would have written this particular letter.   It’s a perplexing matter in part because nothing much about 1 Peter sounds like what we would expect from Peter, as we know him otherwise from the New Testament. This will take a few posts to explain.  The following is largely taken, with edits (including the omission of the footnotes), from my longer study Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press). ****************************** Apart from the name “Peter” at the outset of the letter and possibly the reference to Rome (“Babylon”) at the end, there is nothing in the book of 1 Peter to tie it specifically to the Petrine tradition.  This makes the book decidedly different from lots of other non-authentic writings of the New Testament, the Deutero-Pauline epistles (Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus) whose authors clearly strive to sound like Paul, and [...]

When it comes to the question of whether Peter, the disciple of Jesus, was likely to have written 1 Peter, as I indicated in my previous post, a major issue to consider is the fact that in antiquity MOST people could not read, let alone write, let alone compose a sentence, let along a five-page essay, let alone in a foreign language.  But weren’t Jews the exception?  Didn’t Jewish men all know how to read and write?  It turns out, the answer is no. Again, this is taken from my fuller study, Forged (HarperOne). The fullest, most thoroughly researched, and widely influential study of literacy in Palestine during the period of the Roman empire is by Catherine Hezser.[1]  After examining all of the evidence Hezser concludes that in Roman Palestine the best guesstimate is that something like 3% of the population could read, and that the majority of these would have been in the cities and larger towns.   Most people outside of the urban areas would scarcely ever even see a written text.   [...]

Now that I have laid out the major themes and emphases of 1 Peter in my previous post, I can move on to the questions of who wrote it, when, and why.  The final issue in some ways is easiest, at least when it comes to the overarching purpose of the letter.  As we have seen, the author is concerned about Christians’ reactions to their persecutions, and is intent that they give their opponents no grounds for opposition but lead upright lives, being a “witness” to those who challenge their faith, and imitating Christ in suffering unjustly.  Whoever wrote the letter, and when, it seems reasonably safe to assume this was the major reason for it.  We will see later, however, that there may be at least one less obvious reason as well. For the issues of who wrote it and when, I provide here is largely based on my more extended study, Forged… Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (HarperOne). The book 1 Peter is allegedly written [...]

In this series providing overviews and discussions of each of the books of the New Testament “in a nutshell” we come, following the canonical sequence, to another gem, the book of 1 Peter.   In this post I will focus on its major themes and emphases, and then in subsequent posts deal with a number of critical questions about it, such as who wrote it and when, and why, if it claims to be by Peter, it sounds so much like Paul. First, a one-sentence fifty-word summary. First Peter, is a letter allegedly written by the apostle Peter to gentile Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor who are suffering persecution, urging them to remain true to their faith and to suffer only for upright behavior, in imitation of Christ and in anticipation of his imminent return in judgment.   Now I can provide a fuller account of this short but intriguing book.  Here is an edited account taken from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press. ************************ The [...]

In my previous three posts I’ve argued that the author of the book of James really does want his audience to think he is “James, the brother of Jesus,” but that in fact he was someone else.  In modern parlance, that means the book is a “forgery.”  Ancient Greek did not use the English word forgery, of course, but the terms they used for this kind of book were just as judgmental and, even, ugly. But why would someone forge this book, claiming to be James knowing he wasn’t? The first thing to notice is to reaffirm the one of the first things that we noticed (!):  the book appears to appears to attack a form of Pauline Christianity that stresses the importance of “faith alone” for salvation.  For this author, “faith without works is dead,” and if someone doesn’t live in ways that are beneficial to others and pleasing to God, they cannot be saved, however much faith they claim to have. This is especially seen in what is arguably the most famous passage [...]

Here I conclude my string of posts dealing with whether James the brother of Jesus wrote the book of James as the book itself implicitly claims.  Again this is taken from my more academic study Forgery and Counterforgery, but I've edited it a bit for an audience of regular folk instead of irregular scholars. In my previous post I talked about how our ancient sources everywhere talk about the major concerns and interests of the the historical James and his focus on the Torah and keeping the law.  Does this book reflect any of his widely known  interests? ****************************** The book of James hints toward a James-like audience, as it is addressed to “the twelve tribes”  (that is, faithful Jews scattered throughout the world).  What is striking is that none of the cultural or cultic concerns of James of Jerusalem is in evidence in the book.  Just the opposite.  The book is thoroughly concerned about the “Law,” but not about the aspects of the Law that James himself is reported to have been interested in. Here, [...]